Twitter- again with Twitter- Twitter just updated the display of its new ‘Bookmark’ option, which happens to be one of the several key fixes that Elon Musk had requested in recent weeks to help improve in-app engagement. This supposedly new format relocates the Bookmarks button to the lower function display when you expand a Tweet, which should encourage more people to use the option. Musk calls this a ‘Silent Like’.

Marked

A few weeks back, Musk tweeted that Twitter’s Bookmark functionality was hidden by an ‘obscure UI’, which meant that many users likely didn’t know that it even existed. The value of Bookmarks is that they provide another means to interact with a tweet that you might be interested in but that may not necessarily be a “like” as such.

There has been much debate over the terminology of “like” and what it actually means in a tweet context, as well as the use of the heart icon for the option. In many, if not most, cases, a ‘heart’ probably doesn’t represent the intent as to why anyone would tap the button. This is why Elon is pushing Bookmarks as an alternative and a means to tag and flag items for later reference.

As mentioned earlier, Bookmarks would likely replace “likes.” Well, kind of. Nobody knows how exactly it works. Will that really spark interest? Probably not, but again, Elon seems to think that community notes and verification ticks are far more valuable than any of us realize.

Maybe he’s right. Updating its Bookmarks UI and sharing the news with his 126 million followers, should spark a new wave of users engaging with Tweets in all new ways. Musk hopes to make Bookmark a more relevant metric consideration for marketers moving forward.

Then again, there’s the other side of the spectrum, the one where the update fails and does jack-squat. Either way, it probably doesn’t require too much time and effort for Twitter’s development team to try it out. However, given the number of small errors and issues that are filtering through the app’s systems, it doesn’t really imbue trust in Musk’s ‘hardcore’ management style.

The Wrap

Twitter has certainly pumped out several things over the last couple of weeks, but most of these are not even 100% yet. Perhaps there really is merit in this new option. Whether or not it actually does something for Twitter, we all simply have to wait and see. While it can become another element to denote engagement levels, it remains highly unlikely that it’ll turn whatever current tables Twitter does have, around.

Sources

http://bit.ly/3kFXpOY